SIPP Fund Choice Sanity Check

Linton

The UK % seems rather high to me.
- Your Woodford allocation is very large for a balanced portfolio. It is mainly a UK fund.
- Marlborough Special Situations is a UK Small Cap fund. Small Cap tends to stray into midcap so you have 30% in the smallest 20% companies of the UK market which is a comparatively small part of the world market. This is rather brave/foolhardy.

The Greater Europe figures dont add up.
- I would have more than 5% in Europe anyway.

Agree with the others 13 funds for a £40K portfolio is too many.

suebfg

The fee would apply each time you invest I think. I have seen that there is a 0% fee on Bestinvest but it won't let me invest in that fund - maybe that is a glitch not sure.

Borrowedtune

suebfg wrote: »

I use Bestinvest too but self select funds. I wouldn't go for Asia Pac fund you've selected as it soft closed I believe and attracts approx a 4% initial charge. Also, I don't think my husband's investment in that has done that well as the relatively high ongoing fees erode the gains. I have a different Asia Pac fund for my SIPP but can't recall the name now.

I didn't think it was soft closed.


Possibly mixed up with the FS Emerging Market Leaders fund which soft closed in 2013 ?

TheTracker

As usual Linton's analysis is bang on. Unusually high UK exposure, unusually high Small Cap exposure, slightly unusually low US exposure, too many funds for 40k (I counted 10 not 13).

And I agree with sobryma, decide an asset allocation then the funds to fill it. Portfolio review requests almost always lack this info, and it's often unclear whether the problem is the allocation or merely the efforts to fund against that allocation.

kidmugsy

£40k. Age 36. Why not just buy the Vanguard Global Equity Tracker (or whatever it's called)? Or one of its competitors. Then discipline yourself to check it every six months. No more often, because then you'd fret and fidget. Or put 90% of your money into that and the other 10% into the Gold Bullion Securities ETC as insurance against world financial calamities. The key bit is probably "No more often".

Kendall80

Borrowedtune wrote: »

I didn't think it was soft closed.


Possibly mixed up with the FS Emerging Market Leaders fund which soft closed in 2013 ?

The 4% charge is displayed on the bestinvest page but has a cross through it.

The fund page on CSD makes no mention of the initial charge but it is definitely in the documents.

suebfg

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f2023776-bedd-11e2-a9d4-00144feab7de.html#axzz3L8T5XXkc

I thought both Asia Pac and Emerging Markets had soft closed to new investors. We have invested in both funds.

It does however seem to have no initial charge on Bestinvest now so maybe there has been a change. Not sure.

Kendall80

From CSD;


"As we only provide clean class, commission free funds there are no entry charges on any of the funds listed on our site. Thus, I can confirm that the First State Asia Pacific Leaders B fund has no initial cost."

frugaljim

Thank you to everyone again for replies. Will look at my UK allocation as well as the small cap

cheers
James